Railroad-rail



(No Model.)

E. G. PATTERSON.

` RAILROADVRAIL. l No. 423,078. Patented'Mar. V11, 1890.

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

ELISIIA G. PATTERSON, OF TITUSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA.

RAI LROAD-RAI L.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 423,078, dated March.11, 1890.

Application filed August 3, 1889.

To all whom t may concern.:

Be it known that l, ELIsHA G. PATTERSON, of Titusville, in the county ofCrawford and State of Pennsylvania, a citizen of the United States, haveinvented a new and useful Improvement in Railroad-Rails, of which thefoll lowing is a specification.

In railroad-rails as ordinarily constructed with a foot or flange it isthe usual, if not the universal, practice to make the rail Without anyslots, holes, or notches for the reception of the spikes by which therail is fastened to the cross-ties of the road, and subsequently7 toforni such perforations or notches by means of a punch, drill, or othermachine when the rail is about to be used, or at any rate as a separateprocess or step from that of manufactnring the rail. There are severalobjections to the use of rails so punched or drilled after manufacture,among Which may be mentioned that the punching or drilling of the railwhen cold tends materially to weaken it by disintegrating the metal andbreaking the fibers, especially in the case of steel rails, which arenow most generally used, and that the notch or hole for the spike has tobe made, or should be made, at a point corresponding` nearly with themid-Width of a cross-tie, to secure which either the cross-tie has to beadj usted in position to the rail, or the rail has to be speciallypunched or drilled to suit the position of the ties, and that, further,when it is desirable to insert spikes at points intermediate to the endsof the rail, special holes or notches have to be made in the flange ofthe rail, or the spike has to be driven against the plane side of theflange, which does not prevent longitudinal movement or creeping of thetrack, which is a very common and serious evil. To obviate all of thesedifficulties and furnish rails which may be laid Without preliminarypunching or drilling and without any special adjustment of thecross-ties, and can be spiked equally Well at any point in their lengthand on either side, thus relieving the joint and joint-ties of thestrain incident to the resistance of longitudinal movement, I form theflange of the rail on either side, but preferably on both sides, with aseries of indentations extending inward from the outer edge of thefiange, and forming recesses in which the spikes can be driven in anynumber and at any desired pointin the length of the rail.

In the accompanying drawings, Figure 1 is a perspective view of a T-railhaving indentations on the outer edge of the iiange formed by curved orWave lines. Fig. 2 is a similar view of a rail having notches formed atshort intervals in the otherwise straight edges of the liange. Fig. 3 isa top or plan view of Fig. l.

Like symbols of reference indicate like parts in each.

In the several figures of the drawings, A is the tread, B the web, and CC the flanges, of the rail. In the sides of the fiangesare indentationsD D, which, as before stated, are in Figs. I and 3 formed by continuousWaving lines, and in Fig. 2 by a series of notches formed at intervals.

It will be noticed that the lianges may be made of normal Width, andthis Without necessarily increasing the Weight, and that theindentations occur so frequently as not in any degree to interfere Withthe steadiness of the rail or prevent its having a firm seat on thecross-ties or road-bed.

I have invented a method of manufacturing the rail which I have justdescribed, and which Will form the subject-matter of a separateapplication. It is important, however, that the indentations should forma part of the rail as manufactured, inasmuch as it is one of the specialfeatures of my improved rail that these indentations are made While therail is being formed, and while the iron or steel, as the case may be,is yetin a formative or somewhat plastic condition.

The method which Ihave invented for making the described indentations inthe anges' of rails, and the difference between my method of rolling andthat heretofore in use for analogous purposes, may be briefly stated asfollows: The rail having been gradually formed from a heated bar of ironby passes through the grooves of a pair of rolls, will, When it Vreachesthe final pass in which the indentations are to be formed, have assumedsubstantially, if not exactly, the shape of the finished T-rail havinghead, Web, and ange. In the last pass the rail is rolled on its edge.The grooves for the head and web are sub stantially, if not exactly, ofthe shape and size of those parts of the finished rail, the differencebeing in the grooves to finish the flange. Now, in the ordinary mode ofrolling, this groove would be formed with projections corresponding insize and depth to the indent-ations to be made in the rail, the greatestdepth of the groove (between the projections which form theindentations) being considerably less than one-half of the width of theflange before being inserted between the grooves. In the practice ofthis method there is obviously a large amount of surplus metaldisplaced, and although the metal may be somewhat compressed by therolling the surplus is so large that it can only be disposed of by theelongation of the metal y in the entire rail, (tread and web as well asflange,). and such elongation under the circumstances involvesconsiderable pulling and displacement of the metal. In fact, this cannotbe successfully accomplished,as the metal, especially where steel isused, cannot be disposed of sidewise,but must, if at all,beforcedbackward, which is entirely unobjectionable in case of a blank inprocess of formation, but is impracticable where lthe larger part of thebar has already received its final shape. My method of operation, bywhich I overcome this difficulty, is to employ rolls in which thegrooves to form the indentations in the flanges are out down at theirdeepest point (corresponding with the outer edge of the flange of thefinished rail) to the depth of one-half of the width of the flange ofthe rail before the indentations are made, so that the width of theflange of the rail before indentingit is substantially the same as thatof the widest part of the flange of the rail after being indented. Inthis case there will be very little surplus metal to be disposed of, andno part of the rail, as it is after leaving the pass 1n the railprevious to the last, requires to be at all increased in any of itsdimensions. The metal removed from the indented portions is probablypartly forced into the other portions of the rail by compression, which,together with a slight elongation of the whole rail, is insuiiicientmaterially to disturb or disintegrate the metal. 1

The projections in the grooves of the rolls are made either by turningdown the grooves to the depth of the projections and chipping out thespaces between them, or by turning down the grooves t0 the full depthand inserting teeth in the grooves to make the indentations in theflanges of the rail.

WhatI claim as my invention, and desire to secu re by Letters'Patent,is-

Asa new article of manufacture, arailroadrail having tread, web, andiiange or iianges, the flange or iianges of which have a series ofindent-ations on the outer edge formed while the metal is yet in aformative condition, substantially as and for the purposes described.

ELISHA G. PATTERSON. Witnesses:

A. B. HoWLAND, H. S. BATES.

